But Kneels to Conquer
by Stealth Noodle
Summary: [FFIV] Rydia is in control. Or so she tells herself. [Rydia/Barbariccia, Final Fantasy Kiss Challenge fill, dark.]


**Title:** But Kneels to Conquer  
**Rating:** NSFW (semi-explicit sex, dub-con/non-con, breathplay)  
**Pairing:** Barbariccia/Rydia  
**Summary:** Rydia is in control. Or so she tells herself.

**Note:** Written for the 2013 round of the Final Fantasy Kiss Battle. (I also wrote a ton of shorter fills and posted them under the [ficlet] tag on my journal, but this is the only one long enough for me to feel it's worth crossposting here.) This is definitely on the hard end of the "Mature" rating, though I think it's still south of MA; mind the rating notes!

* * *

"They were Eidolons, once," Leviathan tells her, reluctantly.

Asura, who has always read her better, adds, "The magnitude of their violations was so great that we had no choice but to cast them out. They are Eidolons no longer, and their names will find no purchase on a summoner's tongue."

They are not anxious—they are never anxious—but tension gathers like storm clouds. Rydia feels as if she has dug up an unmarked grave and come bearing the bones.

"I understand," she says, and no more, because she does not want to lie.

* * *

The bond is complex, but at its heart is dominance; anything that kneels to her must heed her call. All four together challenged her, and all four together fell. The rules are clearer than the stars from the moon's surface, starker than the line between life and death.

The only complication would be if they truly were destroyed, but Rydia is all but certain they persist. Neither Leviathan nor Asura is merciful. Neither would banish what they could snuff out.

While the others sleep, Rydia climbs atop an outcrop just out of sight of the camp. The strange lunar soil crumbles and glitters under her feet. When she is high and steady, she closes her eyes, slows her breathing, and joins her hands.

It would pain Edge to fight alongside Rubicante, just as it would surely pain Cecil to join forces with the murderer of his king. Of the specific cruelties of Scarmiglione and Barbariccia, Rydia knows less. She hopes that the latter, at least, will not distress anyone, as it the latter upon whom she intends to call. Anything might lurk in the moon's core; better to brave it with the aid of every elemental power. The sylphs' whispers are nothing like the force of cyclones.

Rydia remembers Barbariccia's fall through all her senses: the bright hair spilled over the metal floor, the deep howl, the sudden stillness of the air, the electric tang bursting on her breath. Raising her chin, she spreads her hands and _pulls_.

Her eyes open on the golden creature hovering just below her, hair undulating, eyes burning like sulfur. Sparkling dust swirls beneath her bare feet.

"Summoner." Barbariccia's voice is just a shade away from mockery, her lips caught between a smile and a snarl. She drifts upward, putting her face level with Rydia's.

Rydia stares unblinking back and resists the urge to rise on her tiptoes. "Barbariccia. By the Code, I command you."

The smile and snarl find middle ground as a smirk. Barbariccia drifts closer, hair rising to block the stars, stirring eddies into the air. When she speaks, light glints from the dagger-points of her teeth: "And what do you command?"

Her naked skin is oppressively close. Rydia's every breath smells of storms. "I will have your aid in battle."

"You have not called me to battle, child. You have called me now."

Rydia bristles; of all the Eidolons, only Leviathan and Asura have ever called her "child." "I have called you," she replies stiffly, "to tell you where you stand."

"Do you command me to stand?"

Barbariccia's leg slides between Rydia's, swift and soft as a breeze parting curtains. The pressure isn't nearly enough to topple her, but Rydia still finds herself throwing her arms out for balance and grinding her heels into the rock. She can feel herself flushing, and her voice comes out too sharp and tight: "No. I command you to kneel."

Their legs slip apart like a loosened braid. Barbariccia still hovers, but her knees fold and her torso bends. Her hair pools around Rydia's feet.

Something catches in Rydia's throat, something hooked into the nerves that flare and fizzle throughout her body. She isn't sure when her fingers curled around the handle of her whip, but she lets go only with effort. This is all wrong and she doesn't know why; she can meet Bahamut's infinite eyes without flinching, issue orders to Leviathan and Asura without stuttering, and point Odin with a steady hand to the creatures she has marked for death, but now she feels like a child playing at authority.

"Begone," she says, too brusquely, "until I summon you again."

In the moment before she vanishes, Barbariccia glances up with a long, languid smile, eyes half-lidded. The air rushes in to fill the vacuum, then falls dead still.

Rydia stands for a long time atop the rocks, willing the tremors out of her hands and furiously annoyed with herself.

* * *

She tells no one what she has done, though her own justifications sit uneasily with her. There's nothing to tell, she insists to herself. She can't deploy Barbariccia in battle until she's certain that her orders will be obeyed, and what is the point of upsetting anyone over something that may never come to pass? When Kain sees her and asks where she has been, she replies, "Eidolon business," and pretends to be too tired to talk further.

Lies by omission are still lies, but the truth is too thorny to pass through her throat.

Cecil wants to visit the Hummingways before the descent into the moon's depths. The cavern vibrates with constant, overlapping hums; it's so simple to slip away from Cecil and Rosa as they negotiate purchases, from Kain as he broods apart, even from Edge as he keeps up a pithy commentary about his perceptions of Hummingway life. Rydia emerges alone into the absolute silence of the moon's surface.

It will be different this time, she promises herself. Behind the high curve of a rock, she disturbs the air again, sets gold against the endless gray.

"Again?" Barbariccia's voice lilts, and her body rises with it until Rydia must tip her chin back. "Still I see no battle, Summoner."

"Kneel."

There's an ineffable frisson in watching her obey. Rydia's breaths become heavy, and she needs a moment to quiet them.

Barbariccia tilts her head back and peers up through pale eyelashes. Locks of her hair curl like long fingers around Rydia's ankles. "You're not the first to call me back," she says, and the purr in her voice makes Rydia's flesh vibrate like the walls of the Hummingways' cavern. "Shall I tell you why you do?"

Rydia feels small again, as if she's still seven years old and struggling to match pace with adults. Dismissing Barbariccia would be running away would be a tacit admission of defeat. She will not be told what she wants; she will not be the one seduced. Her voice is even: "Kiss me."

Barbariccia spirals up around her in the space of a breath, wrapping her in gold. Cool lips press against hers; Rydia moves quickly to deepen the kiss, to ensure that her tongue pushes first. Air flows around her in impossible directions, blowing against every tiny exposed hair on her skin. She tastes the anticipation of rain, the aftermath of storms.

When she pushes Barbariccia away, teeth catch briefly on her lower lip, with just enough force to pierce the skin. Rydia makes exactly the kind of noise she's been trying to avoid.

"Begone," Rydia says before Barbariccia can speak again.

The world is gray and still, and her breaths are loud.

"Hey, Rydia!" Edge's voice makes her jump. She smooths her clothes and forces her face neutral before turning, just as he rounds the rock. "Where have you—what the _hell_?"

Rydia blinks at him, then, with a twinge of dread, wipes her mouth. Her hand comes away red. "I'm fine," she says. "Must have bitten my lip."

"And it was the biggest turn-on of your life?"

Alarm whips through her. She channels it into offense. "Don't be crude. Are we ready to leave?"

There's worry on his face, though he's quick to mask it with bravado. "Look, we're friends, right? And we're both very attractive single people. All I'm saying is, if you need to work out a little tension—"

She draws fire through her palms and wears it like a pair of Yang's claws. Human disputes don't always make sense to her; among Eidolons, everything is resolved when one side shows its teeth and the other shows its belly.

Edge raises his hands and backs away: his belly, because he will not bite her. "Just offering."

"Don't."

* * *

It's a long way down.

They stop again and again to rest, to regroup, to reconsider their path. Rydia always finds it easy to claim that she needs some privacy to recharge or some quiet to commune with her Eidolons. Kain, too, is always carving out time and space for himself; there is no shortage of hidden corners and crannies.

Apart, in the shadows, Barbariccia's hands dig into the bruises inflicted in battle. Her teeth and talons leave marks that will take effort to conceal. She pins Rydia's back against the rough walls and rubs the skin raw.

Rydia commands it all, sometimes in the instant that it happens; when the storm comes, she cannot tell whether she created or augured it. Nothing happens without her will, but her will twists in the wind. "Bite me," she commands, as teeth already scrape her flesh.

She can put a stop to it whenever she wishes, she reminds herself every time she gets dressed. Her word is absolute; Barbariccia cannot even exist without it. She could stop, but why should she? Sooner or later the party will come across some beast that stands strong against everything but the force of the wind, and then she will be justified.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Edge keeps asking, and he is never content to leave it at "Eidolon business."

"Tell them to work it out themselves," he says in the face of her insistence. "Tell them you're busy saving the world and the moon, so the Feymarch has to take a number."

In a world of bellies and teeth, he's all lip. "You wouldn't understand," she says, trying not to worry that he might, a little, every time he sees her flushed and fleetingly sated.

* * *

Her breaths are not her own; air is sucked from her lungs and blown back in, just far enough out of sync with what she needs that she is dizzy and half-frantic. Barbariccia's hair wraps around her limbs, almost tightly enough to restrain. "Don't stop," she gasps, nerves strung tight around Barbariccia's tongue. Teeth press terrifyingly, exhilaratingly close to her most sensitive flesh. "More."

Claws dig into her hip. With a breathless hiss, she feels blood trickle over her skin and vibrates closer to a sharp, ecstatic edge. When she is on the verge of shattering, Barbariccia withdraws to ask, "More of what?"

The danger in the question is hazy and distant, shimmering like a heat mirage. No greater crime than for an Eidolon to kill its summoner, but Barbariccia would, without hesitation, if Rydia commanded it. Power and fear and teeth and bellies all fuse together.

As she finds that she can only make small sounds, far below words, Barbariccia crawls over her quivering body and grins sharply down at her. Their mouths crush together. Rydia tastes herself on Barbariccia's lips; then all the air rushes out of her and does not return.

She thrashes weakly. Her limbs are tangled in Barbariccia's hair. "More" was her unqualified command, and now Barbariccia overwhelms relentlessly. She cannot stop it. Her vision darkens.

In a flash of burning light, Barbariccia's weight vanishes. There comes a familiar and terrible howl.

Rydia's throat opens. Amid her gasps and spasms, she finds her broken voice: "Begone!"

* * *

She is grateful for Rosa's silence as she dresses herself. Her hands shake. Her uneven breaths echo from the walls. She can still taste her own blood in her mouth.

When Rydia finishes, she sits against the wall, draws her knees to her chest, and tries not to sob.

Rosa sits beside her and says, gently, "Edge asked me to speak with you, since you wouldn't speak to him. I wish I'd realized myself that something was wrong. If I had been any slower to find you..."

She's been busy enough worrying about Kain, Rydia is sure. And probably about Cecil too; his broken brother is somewhere below, trying to atone. Rydia has never felt more selfish.

Rosa is silent for a while, but Rydia cannot bring herself to say anything. At length Rosa asks, "Where did she come from? Has Zemus revived them again?"

"No." Rydia's voice scrapes at her throat. She could ask for more healing, but she deserves the pain. She deserves worse. "They used to be Eidolons. The King and Queen told me. I thought I could control her." When she lays it out that way, simple and stark, she feels so _stupid_.

Rosa's face is gray and weary, as it hasn't been since Kain seized the crystal in the Sealed Cave. "I wish you'd told us."

"I knew you'd tell me not to."

Their eyes meet, and for the first time, Rydia realizes how young Rosa is. This is not a woman almost old enough to be her mother, unfailingly gentle and untiringly strong and never uncertain; they must be the same age now, or near enough, and Rydia has long since learned that becoming an adult doesn't make anything easy. Rosa isn't an authority figure to be appealed to or worked around as the situation demands.

"With the other Eidolons," Rosa asks haltingly, feeling blind for the depth of the damage, "is it also... like that?"

Rydia's chest seizes. "_No_. Never. The Code—it would be—it's _wrong_." The sob she has been suppressing bursts loose. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Rosa offers a shoulder, and Rydia clings, burying her face against it. Rosa's arms curve over her back. "We've all done wrong," Rosa whispers. "We've all lost our way."

Rydia wants to say that she doesn't know how it went wrong so quickly, that she has found parts of herself that frighten her, that she lives between two worlds and can't get either of them right. But the words are knotted up in her chest, and she's so tired. When she is too empty to cry anymore, she pulls back and wipes her face on her sleeve.

"When you're ready," Rosa says, "you might want to speak with Kain. Or me, but I think Kain might... better understand."

Even her best intentions, executed perfectly, would have been destructive. Rydia closes her eyes to ride through a series of shaky breaths. When she opens them again, she has nearly stopped trembling. "Not yet," she says.

Rosa nods. "I'll say nothing of this until you ask me to."

"Thank you." Rydia feels like a disaster and is certain that she also looks like one, but she can't stay here on the cave floor, curling into herself. She needs the world to be larger than her own head; she needs company, even company whose concern she must carefully deflect. At least it will be easier to talk to them, someday, than to Asura and Leviathan. Her voice cracks into more of a question than she intended: "Let's go back?"

She takes Rosa's hand, gathers herself, and rises.

It's still a long way down.


End file.
